Post by Catsmate on Apr 3, 2020 11:35:03 GMT
Caistor.
A little mixed history and weirdness, set in East Anglia.
First a geographical note; confusingly there are three English towns called Caistor (it's a corruption of "castrum" a Roman fortress); Caistor, Caistor St Edmund and Caister-on-Sea. I'll be ignoring the first of these and dealing with the two towns in Norfolk, mainly Caistor St Edmund.
Caistor St Edmund is a village in the county of Norfolk in East Angla. A small place of less than three hundred people today it was once a far more significant place, the capital of the Iceni tribe.
Caister-on-Sea (which is, to the confusion of those visiting Norfolk or doing historical research, usually referred to just as 'Caister') is a far more substantial town of nearly nine thousand close to Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coats.
Caistor St Edmund is about 7km from Norwich, and the capital of the Iceni tribe was a settlement located near hat's now the village. After Boudica's uprising in 60CE the area became the Roman capital of East Anglia, named Venta Icenorum ('the marketplace of the Iceni'). It fell into disuse around 450CE and Anglo-Saxon settlements sprang up in the area, later merging to become what is now Norwich.
Curiously, according to local legend, one of the apostles of Jesus, Simon the Zealot, came to England around 60CE and was martyred at Caistor, crucified on the orders of the incompetent and corrupt Roman procurator Catus Decianus. Supposedly this occurred on 10MAY0061.
Or were the stones carefully set by the Romans to contain a weakness in space-time? A spot that's now causing odd effects, such as:
Such weirdness could appear once (Middle Ages? English Civil War? Victorian? World War 2? Classic UNIT era?) or be an ongoing phenomenon somewhere in Norwich (park or church perhaps using the Roman stones) similar to the Cardiff Rift. It might influence a long resident family, who pass down knowledge of the matter father-to-son (or mother-to-daughter) and how to deal with it. Or have a history of psychic powers due to proximity to the rift. Maybe someone tried to investigate the oddity; perhaps (allohistorically) Norwich got it's university in the nineteenth century and the campus houses the oddity. Or the new UEA campus absorbed the site in the '60s, to the consternation of students.
Finally in my little tour of Caistor related oddities there's the coastal town of Dunwich on the Sussex coast. One linked to Caistor by a Roman 'Stone Street' Dunwich has also declined greatly since it's heyday. In the Middle Ages, in fact into the thirteenth century, the twown was a major port, similar in size to London. However coastal erosion and the events of 1286-7 caused it to begin shrinking. Today there are less than two hundred people in the village, down from over ten thousand (there were three thousand living there in 1086CE)
On 01JAN1286 a massive storm surge struck the east side of the town, destrying buildings, magazing the harbour (and the ships there) and causing farmland be become salted.
A little over a year later Dunwich was effected badly by the February 1287 floods. A huge storm front struck the southern coast of England with such ferocity that significant areas of coastline were altered. Harbours were silted, cliffs collapsed into the sea, rivers were diverted and formerly inland towns gained access to the sea. The small city of Winchelsea (in Romney Marsh) was utterly destroyed, as were other towns (Broomhill, Hastings, New Romney and Whitstable for example).
Ten months later, on 14DEC1287 (the day after St. Lucia's day) was struck by the storm known as Saint-Lucia's Flood, storm tide that mostly effected Northern Europe. While it's effects were small in most parts of English (though perhaps two thousand people died and a couple of villages were wiped out) the storm killed around sixty thousand in the Netherlands and Germanies.
Interesting isn't it?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
Caistor was a city when Norwich was none, Norwich was built of Caistor stone.
First a geographical note; confusingly there are three English towns called Caistor (it's a corruption of "castrum" a Roman fortress); Caistor, Caistor St Edmund and Caister-on-Sea. I'll be ignoring the first of these and dealing with the two towns in Norfolk, mainly Caistor St Edmund.
Caistor St Edmund is a village in the county of Norfolk in East Angla. A small place of less than three hundred people today it was once a far more significant place, the capital of the Iceni tribe.
Caister-on-Sea (which is, to the confusion of those visiting Norfolk or doing historical research, usually referred to just as 'Caister') is a far more substantial town of nearly nine thousand close to Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coats.
Caistor St Edmund is about 7km from Norwich, and the capital of the Iceni tribe was a settlement located near hat's now the village. After Boudica's uprising in 60CE the area became the Roman capital of East Anglia, named Venta Icenorum ('the marketplace of the Iceni'). It fell into disuse around 450CE and Anglo-Saxon settlements sprang up in the area, later merging to become what is now Norwich.
Curiously, according to local legend, one of the apostles of Jesus, Simon the Zealot, came to England around 60CE and was martyred at Caistor, crucified on the orders of the incompetent and corrupt Roman procurator Catus Decianus. Supposedly this occurred on 10MAY0061.
- Catus Decianus was the procurator (a minor provincial governor in this case) of Roman Britain in the 60s CE, up until his replacement by Gaius Julius Alpinus Classicianus in 61CE after he failed to suppress the Iceni revolt and fled to Gaul. Tacitus is scathing about him, blaming his rapacity and corruption for provoking the rebellion of Boudica.
- Boudicca and her revolt have appeared in a couple of EU works, specifically the short story Good Queen, Bad Queen, I Queen, You Queen and the audioplay The Wrath of the Iceni
- Getting a little meta, a GM could have some fun with the obscure (and historically inaccurate) film Boudica (Warrior Queen in the USA) from 2003 where the title role was played by Alex Kingdom. Perhaps River Song can be added to the list of time travellers who have impersonated Boudica for their own reasons?
Or were the stones carefully set by the Romans to contain a weakness in space-time? A spot that's now causing odd effects, such as:
- Attracting other time machines.
- Creating a temporary, crossable, rift linking the site to another weak point in some time. Possibly even people wandering through
- Prophetic dreams and visions.
- Visible ghost-like phenonema.
- Weird light effects or electrical discharges
- Altered time flows: "Did mass really last four hours?"
Such weirdness could appear once (Middle Ages? English Civil War? Victorian? World War 2? Classic UNIT era?) or be an ongoing phenomenon somewhere in Norwich (park or church perhaps using the Roman stones) similar to the Cardiff Rift. It might influence a long resident family, who pass down knowledge of the matter father-to-son (or mother-to-daughter) and how to deal with it. Or have a history of psychic powers due to proximity to the rift. Maybe someone tried to investigate the oddity; perhaps (allohistorically) Norwich got it's university in the nineteenth century and the campus houses the oddity. Or the new UEA campus absorbed the site in the '60s, to the consternation of students.
Finally in my little tour of Caistor related oddities there's the coastal town of Dunwich on the Sussex coast. One linked to Caistor by a Roman 'Stone Street' Dunwich has also declined greatly since it's heyday. In the Middle Ages, in fact into the thirteenth century, the twown was a major port, similar in size to London. However coastal erosion and the events of 1286-7 caused it to begin shrinking. Today there are less than two hundred people in the village, down from over ten thousand (there were three thousand living there in 1086CE)
On 01JAN1286 a massive storm surge struck the east side of the town, destrying buildings, magazing the harbour (and the ships there) and causing farmland be become salted.
A little over a year later Dunwich was effected badly by the February 1287 floods. A huge storm front struck the southern coast of England with such ferocity that significant areas of coastline were altered. Harbours were silted, cliffs collapsed into the sea, rivers were diverted and formerly inland towns gained access to the sea. The small city of Winchelsea (in Romney Marsh) was utterly destroyed, as were other towns (Broomhill, Hastings, New Romney and Whitstable for example).
Ten months later, on 14DEC1287 (the day after St. Lucia's day) was struck by the storm known as Saint-Lucia's Flood, storm tide that mostly effected Northern Europe. While it's effects were small in most parts of English (though perhaps two thousand people died and a couple of villages were wiped out) the storm killed around sixty thousand in the Netherlands and Germanies.
Interesting isn't it?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?